From: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org (jinglejangle-digest) To: jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Subject: jinglejangle-digest V1 #160 Reply-To: jinglejangle@smoe.org Sender: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk jinglejangle-digest Tuesday, August 11 1998 Volume 01 : Number 160 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [MLL] "alt-folk: killing them softly." part 1 [Rachel Kramer Bussel ] [MLL] Q: before/after GNS? A: way before... [Rachel Kramer Bussel ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 06:07:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Rachel Kramer Bussel Subject: [MLL] "alt-folk: killing them softly." part 1 Very interesting article...someone forwarded it to the Elliott list from Spin Online, so I'm not sure if it's also in the regular version of SPIN or what...also super bonus points to them for mentioning the wonderful Veda Hille - she's Canadian and has a really interesting style to her music. rachel - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- found this at keyword:spin on america online...next to the article is a handsome picture of elliott. .. . ... . . . . . ..... . . .. . . ... . . ... . . . . ... .. . .. .. . .. As alternative rock continues its artistic free fall, a new breed of folk auteurs has emerged to rejustify your love for words and guitars. By Will Hermes Killing Them Softly San Francisco's Bottom of the Hill is your typical cavelike, beer-stained alt- rock cultural center. A few weeks ago it staged Green Day's Live From the Ten Spot session for MTV, playing host to sundry industry suits and a clutch of invite-only Gilman Street punks. But tonight, at a long-sold-out gig that packs nearly twice as many people into the same space, the main attraction is a slight, seated man hunched over an acoustic guitar, a sad little baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. Elliott Smith is strumming our pain with his fingers, singing of alienation, substance use, and heart abuse with a quiet intimacy that's almost shocking. Even in this room full of fringe-dwellers, you could hear a Nirvana lapel-pin drop. This isn't the first incident of late that could make you look up and ask: kumbayah, my Lord, kumbayah? More and more, the sort of emphatic rush alt-rock once delivered with howling Marshall stacks is being conjured by boys and girls brandishing acoustic guitars. You can hear proof in Ani DiFranco's rewiring of folk, and in Beck, who regularly takes breaks from breakdancing to detonate trad ditties like "John Henry." Bob Dylan's dark-wry balladry on Time Out of Mind hijacked fans half his age, while folk-inflected singer/songwriters such as Beth Orton and Rufus Wainwright have become instant critics' darlings. Meanwhile, indie rockers from Kristin Hersh (of Throwing Muses) to Elliott Smith himself (of grunge/queercore footnote Heatmiser) have traded in bands to become born-again troubadours. It all seems to indicate that as the alt-national consensus turns to party- time ska-core, mindless pop, wordless electro-beats, swing revivalism, and other gestures of high and low irony, alt-rock's bleeding heart is still beating. Its audience may have fled the corporate doppelgnger known as modern rock, but they still hunger for an empathetic connection with non-cyborg, non- smarmy wordsmiths-they still, you know, believe. True, alt's new school bears some resemblance to folk and '70s-style singer/songwriter mooning. But its cathartic language is all about rock. And at the moment, it's sounding more thoroughly rock than rock itself. The reissue of 1952'S Anthology of American Folk Music, the mixed-tape-style comp that became a Rosetta Stone of modern folk, was one of last year's most talked-about releases. It was also one of the sexiest. The reason is the "authenticity," real or perceived, that hums from its six CDs. As measured in the distance between, say, Kurt Cobain and Gavin Rossdale, this fetish for realness has informed indie and alt-rock, like hip-hop, from the get-go. It's probably, in part, what led Cobain to "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?," the harrowing old folk tune that closed Nirvana's set on MTV's Unplugged. After all, he'd pushed a certain mode of rock expression to its bursting point, both artistically and commercially, and watched it explode, and then deflate. As it happened, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"-the final track on his final record-wound up as an ending, when it might have been a beginning. Around the same time, punk cognoscenti at Pacific Northwest labels such as K (whose logo Cobain had tattooed on his arm) and Kill Rock Stars started putting out small acoustic-minded records, determinedly anti-corporate and quietly anti-rock, by acts such as the Softies, Lois, Kaia, Mary Lou Lord, and Elliott Smith." Anytime there's a lot of loud bands, you're gonna have people who go, 'Well, maybe I can do the same type of thing, but not be loud,'" is how Smith explains it, careful to avoid anything that smells like manifesto. But if alt-rock was in part about retooling rock's dick-speak, then acoustica seems a logically subversive next step. Of course, there have been other facets to the current rock backlash. MTV's Unplugged series was prescient (if undiscriminating). So was Lilith Fair, whose new breed of VH1 pop took the queer, goddess-cult folk aesthetic of Olivia Records and the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival to the bank with the marketable looks and pop-spiritual rhetoric of Paula Cole, Sarah McLachlan, and Jewel. But this doesn't have much to do with the indie-land devotion to Ani DiFranco's raw, warrior-girl folk narratives or Elliott Smith's shimmering stalemates of the heart (as one fan remarked: "I see women crying openly at Elliott shows all the time"). Smith, like James Taylor and Cobain before him, radiates a junkie-style, lost-boy quality that makes most of his audience, boys and girls alike, yearn to take him home for drinks and a snuggle. Significantly, he tends to avoid sexed pronouns just as DiFranco matter-of- factly directs love songs to members of both sexes. They are two sides of an epic, gender-fucked pop vulnerability-an emotionally mutable top-and-bottom act in a new sort of folk-rock. Smith's latest album, XO, moves into arranged Beatles- and Big Star-flavored material, multitracking his intricate hurts into the pop madrigals his melodies have always suggested. But the image that sticks is of a solitary man singing plaintively and clutching an acoustic guitar. "I don't think it's particularly more 'honest' to play acoustic," says Smith. "But there are lots of records where the song is just a tool for all the other stuff, like the production and the image of the band. But if you're playing a song acoustically, all you've really got is the song." Yet Smith doesn't see what he does as "folk" music, at least not the sort steeped in the pastoral romance and "We Shall Overcome" political idealism that defined the mid-century folk revival. Smith's not alone. "I used to be really involved with all that heavy-duty Celtic stuff," says Mary Lou Lord, who, despite her indie-rock alliances, can still be found busking in the Boston subway. "But I knew that it wasn't really me. I'd be doing 'The Band Played Waltzing Matilda' and thinking, 'What the fuck am I singing this for?' I don't even vote." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 06:10:25 -0400 (EDT) From: Rachel Kramer Bussel Subject: [MLL] "alt-folk: killing them softly." part 2 - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- The solution for some lies in a folk-minded fetishization of pop's secret histories. If Anthology of American Folk Music is a kind of bible for one generation of self-made musicians, then Big Star's Sister Lovers, Daniel Johnston's Yip/Jump Music, and Nick Drake's Fruit Tree are sacred texts to another. "Folk music is the stuff that endures," says Dan Bern, one of the few acoustic rockers who doesn't shrink from the term "folkie." "Woody Guthrie was just playing what he heard. If he'd grown up on the Clash he would've still written 'This Land Is Your Land,' but he would have had the Dust Brothers produce it." Spawned by folk eclectics Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, Rufus Wainwright learned a lot from the traditions he grew up with. "Folk is where the whole idea of a catchy tune comes from," he says, "something that could be whistled and remembered. It's about things that are universal." Along with Smith and DiFranco, Wainwright projects a wide-screen personality that burns with a hyper-folk intensity. Spare arrangements only magnify this, especially live, where the intimacy sowed on record can bloom into bona fide relationships. This is the sort of thing that points to careers rather than one-hit wonders, a pretty radical concept these days. It's not surprising both Wainwright and Smith were signed to DreamWorks by Lenny Waronker, the A&R swami who presided over Warner Bros./Reprise Records during its early-'70s singer/songwriter glory days. Like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor, Wainwright and Smith are artists whose finely woven sounds seem inseparable from the fabric of their being. "Listen to Elliott's records long enough and you can almost see him; the same is true of Rufus," Waronker says with paternal pride. "The devotion fans have for Smith-I haven't seen that in years." It's hard to miss the continuum here: Records such as Neil Young's Harvest, Fairport Convention's Liege and Lief, and the Grateful Dead's Workingman's Dead were rock-to-unrock conversions made in part as a response to a co-opted underground, while pop eccentrics such as Randy Newman and Van Dyke Parks used folk as one ingredient among many. This strategy has been embraced by artists from Beth Orton and Parlor James to Palace's Will Oldham, who find that breakbeats and drum machines mix quite nicely with folk tradition. It's a tack that leaves some artists feeling like citizens without countries. "You can end up flailing about," says Orton, whose acoustic songcraft has mated with the Chemical Brothers' and William Orbit's electronica. "I can confuse myself quite easily with which musical direction to take. But I find it eventually," she says. Most folk hybridists are confident that audiences will come along for the ride. "Maybe the hard-rock audience won't listen to anything else," muses Veda Hille, a young Canadian singer/songwriter whose Spine CD traffics in the sort of art-folk-pop-rock whatsit that epitomizes the new guard. "But most everyone else is ready for anything, y'know? I mean, it's the end of the century." Songs Sung Blue The alternative alt-folk canon In addition to the usual suspects-Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young-modern alt-folk owes debts to a number of lesser-known trailblazers, visionary turncoats, and odd-duck fusionists. Herewith, an eclectic's dream team: TERRY CALLIER | Rep: Soul-jazz folkie with hypnotic mojo, echoed by Ben Harper and others. Start with: What Color Is Love? (Cadet) and guest spots on Beth Orton's Best Bit EP (Dedicated). SANDY DENNY | Rep: A voice for the ages, probably best known Stateside for her cameo on Led Zep's "The Battle of Evermore." Start with: Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking (Hannibal) and the Who Knows Where the Time Goes? box set (Hannibal). NICK DRAKE | Rep: The pale groom of pastoral gloom. Beloved of every introspective depressive with an acoustic guitar; covered by Sebadoh, the High Llamas, etc. Start with: Fruit Tree box set (Hannibal). JOHN FAHEY | Rep: Avant-folkie "guitar thinker" championed by post-rock crowd. Start with: The just-reissued America (Takoma) and the art-damaged City of Refuge (Tim/Kerr). MICHAEL HURLEY | Rep: Existential backwoods-boy and chronicler of talking pork chops, randy spiders, and proudly dysfunctional love (or is that sex?). Start with: The reissued classics Have Moicy! (with the Unholy Modal Rounders, etc.) and Snockgrass. INCREDIBLE STRING BAND | Rep: Unkempt court music by starry-eyed jesters Robin Williamson and Mike Heron, played on a thrift-shop assortment of instruments. Start with: The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter and Wee Tam & The Big Huge (Hannibal). JOHN MARTYN | Rep: His somnambulist elocution can be heard in Beth Orton's dreamtime mumbling. Start with: 1973's hash-clouded Solid Air (Island) and the new The Church With One Bell (Thirsty Ear). KATE AND ANNA McGARRIGLE | Rep: Canadian fatalists who train their creaky sister harmonies on love gone wrong, aging, death, and other curiosities. Start with: 1976's Kate and Anna McGarrigle (Warner Bros.) and the recent Matapedia (Hannibal). TOM RAPP | Rep: Leader of the great, lost, cosmic folk-rock outfit Pearls Before Swine; recently pulled from his law practice to serve as father figure at the psychedelic-revivalist Terrastock festivals. Start with: Pearls Before Swine's One Nation Underground and Balaklava (Get Back/ESP). THE ROCHES | Rep: A trio of warbling sisters who deliver matter-of-fact madrigals and workaday tales of heartbreak in goosebumpy three-part harmony.Start with: The Roches (Warner Bros.) and sister Suzzy's recent solo joint Holy Smoke (Red House). W. H. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 08:35:48 PDT From: "Hanson Ho" Subject: [MLL] people who get offended easily: don't read (Got the idea from the Sarah McLachlan List) Here's a translation of Western Union Desperate in to Ebonics: ah felt uh little uneasy on easy on easy street out o' place an' incomplete page it guilt, page it what ya will kissed peace out da summer skies Hollywood an' Malibu tides through thick an' thin ya gotsuh pimp-tight nigga in me just give me uh colt 45 an' give me uh bed give me uh pillow fo' muh mutha fuckin head play me uh song an' sing me ta sleep an' meet me in da middle o' muh mutha fuckin dreams well ah've seen da sun rise from da cliffs o' point Reyesan' ah've seen it set on Thunder Bay but ah always keep muh mutha fuckin compass set on ya when da night comes in an' da stars come out an' da highway lines start ta wear me out it'll be okay 'cause ah'm coming back home ta ya Distant salutations an' silly souvenirs can't he`p yo' twilight loneliness or brush away yo' tears ah'll wire ya some love taday dere's so much mo' ah wants ta say ah'm Western Union desperate in uh payphone in da rain an' it's so insane... ah'm Rimbaud an' ya're Verlaine So werd up, California here ah come ah've gotsmuh mutha fuckin backpack an' uh sunburnt thumb ah hope muh mutha fuckin compass iz tried an' true 'cause when ah need uh nigga it's still ya, in the hood" jaa it's ya. ya know it's ya, Don't make me come ovah there bitch..." I think it's pretty funny, but perhaps none of you think as I do... Hanson Ho ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 11:50:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Rachel Kramer Bussel Subject: [MLL] S*bscribe/Uns*bscribe info Because lately people seem to have trouble getting on and off the list, here is the info - substitute "u" for "*" in the following and DON'T put the quotes in your email: To get on the list, send email to Majordomo@smoe.org and put one of these in the BODY: "s*bscribe jinglejangle" OR "s*bscribe jinglejangle-digest" To get OFF the list, send email to Majordomo@smoe.org and put one of these in the BODY: "uns*bscribe jinglejangle" OR "uns*bscribe jinglejangle-digest" If you have a question, email me at rkb200@is5.nyu.edu or visit http://www.smoe.org :) Rachel ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 13:41:20 EDT From: AWeiss4338@aol.com Subject: Re: [MLL] "alt-folk: killing them softly." part 2 This is an excelent article. I'm so glad that someone not only metioned the Roches and Kate And Anna McGarrigle ( I second that recomendation) as people who pionerred the new group of folk musicians but that someone got it right about the Lilith Fair. And that doesn't mean Lilith is bad, no less then Chris Williamson, the queen of Woman's music, prased the Fair as following in the footsteps of women's music. And this was after she took a swipe at women in rock, for playing with/ for men (she's a radical lesbian femisist sepertist). Check out her album The Changer And The Changed to find out what Woman's music is about, it's the difintive album of that type of music. BTW Elliot, from the little I've heard of him (I plan to start buy his albums stating with his new one and work backward) sounds like a folkie to me. And that's great. One more thing and then I'll go. I would also recomend Dar Wiliams and Richard Shindell as two more "modern folk" preformers to listen to. Recomended albums End of The Summer (Dar) Reunion Hill (Richard). Andrea ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 12:42:04 -0700 From: "Drew Harrington" Subject: [MLL] how I got into MLL I first heard (of) Mary Lou on accident. She was busking at one of the entrances to bumbershoot last year. We hung out and listened to her whole set. It was really nice. She said she had a CD coming out pretty soon (GNS) which led us to believe she didn't already have CDs released. I waited until GNS came out, and bought a copy. I didn't like it as well as seeing her all by herself, but was happy when I discovered (through this list and Rachel's website) that she had the two previous CDs, which I bought and prefer to GNS. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 17:20:01 -0400 (EDT) From: Rachel Kramer Bussel Subject: [MLL] Q: before/after GNS? A: way before... - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 13:51:09 -0400 (EDT) From: owner-jinglejangle@smoe.org To: owner-jinglejangle@smoe.org Subject: BOUNCE jinglejangle@smoe.org: Non-member submission from [ouellette@gemgrp.zko.dec.com (Roland G. Ouellette)] Subject: Q: before/after GNS? A: way before... X-VMS-To: JINGLEJANGLE@SMOE.ORG Some people just happen to live in the right city. Some people have great friends who clue them into cool music. I'm lucky on both counts, having seen MLL first in either the summer of 1992 or 1993. When Mary Lou played downstairs at the Middle East a couple of weeks back, she looked as happy and unflustered as I've ever seen her. Elf Power (who played befor her) were good to see again; this time I knew the songs. I'll my recomendation of Sarge to Rachel's. Elizabeth's vocals remind me a bit of a high school girlfriend of mine a bit caffiene buzzed, only a bit more cogent and with occational lyrical melancholy shadows. The last couple of times I've been quite impressed with Rachel's (the one in Sarge) bass work, which doesn't quite all make it through my headphones. Buy Charcoal first. Roland. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 18:56:12 EDT From: AWeiss4338@aol.com Subject: Re: [MLL] how I got into MLL I got into Mary Lou through the Safe And Sound comp to. But I didn't buy anything from her until I dicovered Rachel's website. And we'd talked a few times about her too. Between her, a very nice DJ on my local aternative rock station, Michelle Amabile (Anyone else out there listen to WHTG in Eatontown NJ, they were one of the first stations to play Mary Lou when GNS casme out), and yes, a dream about buying a Mary Lou album led me to buy her self titled EP on KRS. Then it was martin Saints. And finally GNS. I loved each album. And I've seen her live (and met her) she is very cool. Andrea ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 00:45:32 -0400 (EDT) From: "Mark Anthony Miazga" Subject: [MLL] Re: anti-folk scene > One more thing and then I'll go. I would also recomend Dar Wiliams and > Richard Shindell as two more "modern folk" preformers to listen to. > Recomended albums End of The Summer (Dar) Reunion Hill (Richard). Other artists I would recommend in this "movement" are Brenda Kahn (an amazing songwriter from NY area, best album is "Epiphany in Brooklyn"), Wally Pleasant (hilarious, satirical singer from EAst Lansing, MI), Dan Bern (very funny), Hayden... Any more, anyone? I second the DAr Williams nomination; she's a great writer. By the way, are there any Murmurs fans out there? I just picked up their new album, which has been getting a lot of publicity, and was disappointed to find that it is basically "Pristine Smut" plus only three new songs. "Pristine Smut" was my favorite album of 1997 and was criminally ignored by everyone, and deserved to be a hit, but I would think that pretending an album is new and releasing a bunch of old songs would just alienate old songs. I haven't listened to the new songs yet, but it was a surprise. Anyone know the story? - -- Mark A. Miazga 541 East Wilson Hall miazgama@pilot.msu.edu East Lansing, MI 48825 Michigan State University (517) 353-0240 "Random beatings will continue until morale improves." -- anonymous "I do not agree with a word you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." -voltaire "the love of meat prevents any real change." -douglas coupeland "the animals of the world exist for their own reasons. they were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men." - -alice walker ------------------------------ End of jinglejangle-digest V1 #160 **********************************